WISHFUL thinking perhaps, but resistance to the Great Reset seems to be growing. Last week the Daily Telegraph reported the findings of a Freedom of Information request showing that the Greater London Authority’s existing ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) scheme gains less in revenue than it is owed in fines, while arguments rage over its planned massive expansion from the end of next month.
It seems that the veteran campaigner Piers Corbyn, whose pre-millennial Vauxhall has now incurred almost £70,000 in unpaid penalties, is not the only one. According to Transport for London data, income from Ulez in 2022-2023 was £224,633,003 (including £73million from fines). But outstanding levies amounted to £255,545,388. This was more than double the dues of the previous year (although this is explained by the extension from central London to the area within the north and south circular ring-road not starting until October 25 2021, and reduced movement during the Covid-19 regime).
Clearly thousands of people are chucking the penalty notifications in the bin. Legally, there is no requirement to engage with a third-party private company which is administering the fines (and profiting from their payment). Motorists already pay road tax and hefty duty on petrol and diesel. Targeting of older vehicles penalises the poor, who are less able to afford a newer car or van with lower emissions. Meanwhile the rich, with their gas-guzzling Range Rovers and Porsches, or costly (and ecologically destructive) electric vehicles, smugly exercise their exemption.
Alongside this civil disobedience, direct action has erupted. Cameras installed for the expansion of Ulez to the whole of Greater London have been covered with supermarket bags, vandalised or removed. Residents of outer boroughs are discovering why their suburban areas previously part of Surrey, Kent, Essex or Middlesex were absorbed by the metropolitan administration in 1965. They may still have their former county as their postal address, but they are cash cows for the ideological largesse of City Hall. Mayor Khan is much worse than his Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone because he is not only focusing on London but playing a prominent role in a globalist network of cities for ‘citizens of the world’.
It is still not certain that the Ulez extension will happen on August 29 as scheduled. Five Conservative-led councils (the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Hillingdon and Harrow plus Surrey County Council) have been in the High Court in an attempt to overturn Khan’s £12.50 daily charge beyond the present boundaries. This will apply not only to residents but to anyone driving into Greater London. Farcically, farmers on the Kentish fringe of Orpington, for example, will be charged for driving a tractor along a short stretch of road which happens to be within Khan’s fiefdom.
Khan is a seasoned eco-zealot. Recently he found time to write a treatise Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency, presenting seven steps to gain support for tougher action on climate change. He is taking the same approach as the behavioural psychologists in the Covid-19 regime, inducing fear by claiming that cars are causing severe asthma. By a long way, the most polluted air is in the London Underground.
If the authorities were really concerned about sustainability they would do something about mass immigration. Multicultural traffic jams are a diversity not to celebrate. But even if they wanted to reduce the relentless demographic influx, government ministers, councils and mayors cannot override the UN Migration Pact, quietly signed by Theresa May in 2018. More people, more taxes. However the majority of inhabitants of the forests of high-rise apartment blocks shooting up across London have no need or space for a car. They are already living in a ‘smart city’, with all amenities nearby. Drivers in outer boroughs will have the worst of both worlds, lacking the facilities of urban hubs while paying for other people’s privilege.
For several weeks, the hashtag #ClimateScam has been trending on Twitter. As more people realise that Net Zero is not for climate change but for control, Khan is facing a showdown with Londoners. Ulez is extortion and as Thomas Jefferson said, ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty’.
